The Baltimore Sun
The Baltimore Sun is the largest general-circulation daily newspaper based in the U.S. state of Maryland and provides coverage of local, regional, national, and international news.
Founded in 1837, the newspaper was owned by Tribune Publishing until May 2021, when it was acquired by Alden Global Capital, which operates its media properties through Digital First Media. David D. Smith, the executive chairman of Sinclair Broadcast Group, closed a deal to buy the paper on January 15, 2024.
History
19th century
The Sun was founded on May 17, 1837, by Arunah Shepherdson Abell and two associates, William Moseley Swain from Rhode Island, and Azariah H. Simmons from Philadelphia, where they had started and published the Public Ledger the year before.Abell became a journalist with the Providence Patriot and later worked with newspapers in New York City and Boston.
20th century
The Abell family and descendants owned The Sun until 1910, when the local Black and Garrett families invested in the paper at the suggestion of former rival owner/publisher of The News, Charles H. Grasty, and they, along with Grasty gained a controlling interest; they retained the name A. S. Abell Company for the parent publishing company. That same year The Evening Sun was established under reporter, editor and columnist H.L. Mencken.From 1947 to 1986, The Sun was the owner and founder of Maryland's first television station, WMAR-TV, which was a longtime affiliate of CBS until 1981, when it switched to NBC. The station was sold off in 1986, and is now owned by the E. W. Scripps Company, and has been an ABC affiliate since 1995. A. S. Abell also owned several radio stations, but not in Baltimore itself.
The newspaper opened its first foreign bureau in London in 1924. Between 1955 and 1961, it added four new foreign offices.
As Cold War tensions grew, it set up shop in Bonn, West Germany, in February 1955; the bureau was later moved to Berlin. Eleven months later, The Sun was one of the first U.S. newspapers to open a bureau in Moscow. A Rome office followed in July 1957, and a New Delhi bureau was opened four years later, in 1961. At its height, The Sun ran eight foreign bureaus, giving rise to its boast in a 1983 advertisement that "The Sun never sets on the world."
The paper was sold by Reg Murphy in 1986 to the Times-Mirror Company of the Los Angeles Times.
The same week, a 115-year-old rivalry ended when the oldest newspaper in the city, the News American, a Hearst paper since the 1920s with roots dating back to 1773, folded. A decade later in 1997, The Sun acquired the Patuxent Publishing Company, a local suburban newspaper publisher that had a stable of 15 weekly papers and a few magazines in several communities and counties.
In the 1990s and 2000s, The Sun began cutting back its foreign coverage. In 1995 and 1996, the paper closed its Tokyo, Mexico City and Berlin bureaus. Two more—Beijing and London—fell victim to cost-cutting in 2005. The final three foreign bureaus—Moscow, Jerusalem, and Johannesburg, South Africa—fell a couple of years later. All were closed by 2008, as the Tribune Co. streamlined and downsized the newspaper chain's foreign reporting. Some material from The Suns foreign correspondents is archived at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
21st century
In the 21st century, The Sun, like most legacy newspapers in the United States, has suffered a number of setbacks in the competition with Internet and other sources, including a decline in readership and ads, a shrinking newsroom staff, and competition from 2005 to 2007 with the free daily The Baltimore Examiner, along with a similar Washington, D.C.–based publication of a small chain recently started by new owners that took over the San Francisco Examiner. In 2000, the Times-Mirror company was purchased by the Tribune Company of Chicago. In 2014, it transferred its newspapers, including The Sun, to Tribune Publishing.The Sun introduced a new layout design in September 2005, and again in August 2008. By 2010 daily circulation as of 2010 had fallen to 195,561 and 343,552 for the Sunday edition. On April 29, 2009, the Tribune Company announced the lay off of 61 of the 205 staff members in the Sun newsroom. On September 23, 2011, it was reported that the Baltimore Sun would be moving its web edition behind a paywall starting October 10, 2011.
The Baltimore Sun is the flagship of the Baltimore Sun Media Group, which also produces the b free daily newspaper and more than 30 other Baltimore metropolitan-area community newspapers, magazines and Web sites. BSMG content reaches more than one million Baltimore-area readers each week and is the region's most widely read source of news.
On February 20, 2014, The Baltimore Sun Media Group announced that they would buy the alternative weekly City Paper. In April, the Sun acquired the Maryland publications of Landmark Media Enterprises.
In February 2021, as part of the planned merger between Tribune Publishing and Alden Global Capital, Tribune announced that Alden had reached a non-binding agreement to sell The Sun to the Sunlight For All Institute, a nonprofit backed by businessman and philanthropist Stewart W. Bainum Jr. The deal was contingent on approval by Tribune shareholders of the merger deal. It fell apart in talks over operating agreements with Tribune for functions including human resources and customer service. Bainum then led a failed bid to acquire all of Tribune Publishing. Bainum subsequently founded The Baltimore Banner, pledging $50 million to the nonprofit outlet.
In February 2022, the editorial board of The Sun published a lengthy apology for its racism over its 185–year history, including specific offenses such as accepting classified ads for selling enslaved people and publishing editorials that promoted racial segregation and disenfranchisement of Black voters.
Acquisition by David Smith
In January 2024, David D. Smith, executive chairman of Sinclair Broadcast Group, reached an agreement to acquire the paper, with conservative commentator Armstrong Williams holding an undisclosed stake. Though the transaction was independent of Sinclair, Smith said he foresaw partnerships between the paper and Sinclair properties like its flagship station, Fox affiliate WBFF-TV. Smith said he believed he could grow subscriptions and advertising through a greater focus on community news and integrating technology in ways other print media publishers are not going. In his first visit to the newsroom, he sparred with reporters and said the paper should emulate WBFF's news philosophy, including through non-scientific reader polls and aggressive coverage of Baltimore City Public Schools. He dismissed newsroom concerns about the future of public service journalism. Current and recently departed Baltimore Sun reporters told the Neiman Foundation for Journalism in November 2024 that in the months since Smith's purchase, he has continued to tell journalists that he doesn't read stories published in their paper beyond just the headline, and has neither pitched specific stories nor openly criticized the paper's coverage of stories. In December 2024, Smith told Sun photographer Amy Davis that he had begun reading The Baltimore Sun.Since Smith's acquisition of The Baltimore Sun, the paper has become more conservative, and has published more stories on Baltimore mayor Brandon Scott and his administration, as well as crime in Baltimore. The paper has also republished content from WBFF, also owned by Smith, the conservative news wire The Center Square, columns written by Smith's daughter, and features on new restaurants opened by Atlas Restaurant Group, which is owned by Smith's nephew. According to industry figures and reporting by The Baltimore Banner, readership of the newspaper fell by nearly half in the first year of Smith's acquisition and the Baltimore Suns website had fewer unique visitors to its website than in the year before. At least 20 journalists left the company, with many citing concerns they held over the way stories about juvenile crime and city government in Baltimore were written, and other reporters leaving to work for The Baltimore Banner.
Williams said the paper's editorial page would cease endorsing political candidates and start including more conservative viewpoints, but not at the expense of liberal ones. He said at the time that the newspaper may run his syndicated column "on its merits." The paper's opinion page now regularly publishes Wiliiams' columns and video commentaries. In June 2024, The Sun began republishing content from channel 45's website, provoking protests from staffers and the Baltimore Sun Guild, which released a statement expressing concern with the lack of transparency at the paper on the relationship between The Baltimore Sun, Fox45 and other Sinclair newsrooms, and criticizing language used in the station's articles and Williams' editorial articles, particularly toward immigrants and transgender people.
In June 2024, longtime managing editor Sam Davis announced he would retire at the end of the month. Opinion editor Tricia Bishop, who has worked for the newspaper since 1999, would succeed him, with Davis staying on for a few months as a consultant for The Baltimore Suns owners. The Sun's primary obituary writer, Frederick N. Rasmussen, who worked at the paper for 51 years and wrote thousands of obituaries, resigned in January 2025 over the direction of management.
On June 10, 2024, the Baltimore Sun Guild raised concern with what it said were ethical breaches committed by management since the takeover, including the use of Fox 45's content and Williams columns that did not meet Sun editorial standards. This included language used to describe immigrants and transgender people. The guild demanded the Sun stop republishing WBFF-TV content and asked management to meet with staff to discuss their concerns. Williams said in a statement he respected the guild's opinion but hoped the union "reciprocally appreciates legitimate managerial prerogatives in the journalistic enterprise". In a subsequent Sun column, Williams wrote the guild and the Associated Press had no inherent authority to prescribe the way in which language is used. Despite this, the wording used to describe immigrants in one republished Fox 45 story was eventually changed.
The Baltimore Sun Guild has also raised concerns with the new ownership's efforts to stall contract negotiations with the paper's unionized reporters, with some employees handing out fliers at restaurants owned by David Smith's nephew, Alex, calling Smith a "union buster". Smith denied these accusations, telling Sun photographer Amy Davis that he had multiple union employees across the country and that he'd been negotiating with unions for fifty years, despite employee testimony that Smith threatened to shut down WBFF-TV after its employees started talking about forming a union. Smith also dismissed Davis's concerns that management was proposing union-busting clauses in negotiations, including the ability to terminate employees without just cause, saying, "Nobody does that. There are laws to protect people from that". In September 2025, The Baltimore Suns management proposed a new contract to its union employees that included a gag rule prohibiting Guild members from making "false or disparaging statements" about the paper's management or ownership, blaming disparaging statements made by the Baltimore Sun Guild for the paper's circulation drop. Since proposing the gag rule, management has refused to continue bargaining with the Baltimore Sun Guild, calling their latest contract their "last, best, and final offer".
Following the Suns acquisition, one of its arts reporters asked Smith if she should look for a new job amid his acquisition. Smith avoided the reporter's question and instead discussed his past as a "world-class furniture builder" and a photographer. In October 2024, the newspaper eliminated its features desk and reassigned its three reporters to news departments. The guild said in a statement that it would be the first time since 1888 that the paper would be without coverage of the city's cultural life.